Importance of Communication in Testing or How to Communicate Your Ideas

This week I attended a CzechTest conference and it was a wonderful experience, as there were many foreign experts that had 10 to 20 years experience in Software Testing. We have a serious lack of those people in Czech Republic, don't we? But I was most impressed by Lloyd Roden, consultant from United Kingdom, who has been also speaker at conferences such as STARWest, STAREast, AsiaSTAR and EuroSTAR.

What was so different about this man was not his ideas or content of his presentation because I have met many intelligent and experienced people like him, but his communication and presentation skills. After his presentation you not only think about the topic, but you also feel energized and want to transform these ideas into your everyday life. And that is probably one of things that make him such a good Test Manager, because in testing (especially test management) it is all about communication.

Rik Marselis, one of other speakers at this conference asked us if we think testing is technical discipline or people discipline. I think it is both.

There are a lot of good testers who understands more computers than people and that is fine as long as they are teamed with testers who are good in communicating with and understanding to stakeholders.
Communication is the most important skill to all managers and people who wants to be heard. And I have not met a tester yet who does not want to be heard and promote good quality in his organization.

Tester is a programer’s best friend.

I teach my students that tester is the programmer’s best friend.
But how could someone who is constantly finding faults in the men work be his best friend?
Only by being tactful, helpful and by providing good information that this man needs.
But hey! That is exactly what it means to be a good tester. Tester provides information? Isn’t this great?

Programmer is just one other person we are helping by providing necessary information. If we care for programmers and help them find and fix the problem quickly by providing relevant information, we really are their good friends.

The same goes for other stakeholders as well: managers, users, business analytics, and so on.

Tester provides information. Good tester provides the right information.

This is the skill we need to hone: how to provide the right information and how to communicate it properly.
And if you want to go now and improve your skills, here is some tips how to start.

Tips:

• Improve your bug reports: crash course on reporting bugs
• Improve your influential writing and speaking: coaching testera how to email and influance stakeholders
• Improve your presentation skills for when you speak with managers: Take lessons in presentation skills if you can, or if not read some tips (Presentation Magazine) and watch some video tutorials (Effective Presentation Skills)
• Exercise your skills whenever you can: uTest bug battle
   

Reflection on the testing mission

Manager should ...
... have personality of a leader
... clearly explain to other members of the team what is project mission and its objectives
... be able to inspire people for the task
... support the adoption of project objectives by employees
... promote cooperation and activity
... motivate to improve

This kind of approach I have encountered with in the lectures on the management school, in the wise books such as Measurements in Quality Management Systems by Jaroslav Nenadál, and unfortunately somewhat less frequently in practice.

The atmosphere of cooperation, enthusiasm and responsibility for achieving the objectives are certainly a plus in many areas, but in software testing are rather magical ingredients.

The definition of goals and efforts to achieve them is obviously the beginning of the journey, how to become from an average tester who only follows the scenarios and instructions for testing, to a real expert.

Test manager or project manager by defining test missions and inspiring testers for their achievement creates an environment that helps testers to improve and many of them will start to growth into outstanding professionals.

But it is a journey that will not end after a few hours or days. It is a journey in which you can go as long as you have motivation.
As long as you will want to improve, there always will be room for improvement.

The mission of testing determines what a current aim of testing is, and defines the criteria to assess whether and how the mission is fulfilled. So it is possible to better manage work tester, if he is said what goals the testing should achieve, what is the intention of testing.

The objectives of the test mission may be various: estimate the error rate of individual application modules, prepare reproducible tests, detect as many errors as possible, or just quickly detect errors which prevent the deployment of applications.

Frequently testing has multiple goals, and so mission has more objectives.

Purpose of defining mission is to understand intention of testing and the ability to assess results.

Have we fulfilled our mission? How? Why we failed? Is there room for improvement? What have we learned? Is it possible to achieve better results with another approach?

The definition of specific objectives of the testing iteration is a powerful tool. It enables efficient management of resources and teaches testers how to do their job better.

The most useful goals are measurable.

Two groups test the same product, how to decide which group is better?

If we do not know how good we are and how we meet our objectives, then there is lack of room for improvement and lack of motivation. Then the firm will have instead of professionals and effective testing only clever monkeys and not very good but expensive tests.